Fox News has been one of the main sources of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, broadcasting literally hundreds of examples of alternative facts about the deadly outbreak in just a single week. And as a Media Matters study also found in late May, the network gave scant coverage as the U.S. death toll was officially approaching the 100,000 mark. (At time of writing, the CDC’s official death toll is now over 140,000.)
The network’s single biggest peddler of such deception has been Laura Ingraham, host of the Fox prime-time show The Ingraham Angle.
On just this past Friday’s edition of her show, for example, Ingraham hosted cardiologist Dr. Robert Oskoui. Their discussion ranged from alleging the inefficacy (or even danger) of wearing cloth masks to fight the spread of the disease, continuing to promote the use of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as treatment for COVID-19 — and yes, alleging that the coronavirus death counts are inflated.
Ingraham and Oskoui zeroed in on a report from the local Fox-owned station in Orlando, Florida, which found that a motorcycle crash victim had apparently been added to the state’s official coronavirus death count.
After playing a video clip from the local story — to which Ingraham commented that she couldn’t understand what the local health official was saying through his mask — Oskoui said he didn’t think such an incident was a “one-off,” and that the federal Department of Health and Human Services should “audit every COVID death and every COVID diagnosis of every hospital.”
“Remember, we're paying bonus money to patients who are intubated for COVID and who are diagnosed as having COVID in the hospital,” Oskoui said. “That's coming to hundreds of millions of dollars. I think so the American people don't get cheated, these hospitals need to be audited, every single one of them, every single case.”
Of course, the idea of the federal government auditing every single COVID-related death, as proposed here, would also have the effect of vastly slowing down the official reporting of deaths — which would help other Fox hosts and right-wing media personalities who have similarly claimed that the official death counts aren’t real.
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
Trump apparently lied about being asked to throw out a pitch for the Washington Nationals. Big deal, Trump lies about everything. It is something to expect from both a pathologically lying President and message board posters who support him.
Trump apparently lied about being asked to throw out a pitch for the Washington Nationals. Big deal, Trump lies about everything. It is something to expect from both a pathologically lying President and message board posters who support him.
Yankees, but yeah.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Trump apparently lied about being asked to throw out a pitch for the Washington Nationals. Big deal, Trump lies about everything. It is something to expect from both a pathologically lying President and message board posters who support him.
Yankees, but yeah.
Meanwhile Fauci’s pitch to open the Washington-Yankees game was a textbook example of flattening the curve. So I hear.
"A Houston doctor who praises hydroxychloroquine and says that face masks aren’t necessary to stop transmission of the highly contagious coronavirus has become a star on the right-wing internet, garnering tens of millions of views on Facebook on Monday alone. Donald Trump Jr. declared the video of Stella Immanuel a “must watch,” while Donald Trump himself retweeted the video."
"She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.
She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens."